PalmSource Inc, announced that it has received a $20 million minority equity investment by Sony Corporation that will result in its ownership of about a six percent share of PalmSource. This investment, combined with expanded business and technical collaboration agreements enhances both companies' strategic commitment to grow the Palm Economy.

Palm Inc. is revamping much of its handheld line for Fall 2002 and the first model released is the Zire, an entry-level device introduced at a new low price point: $99. With it's basic feature set, it isn't the kind of device that PIC regulars are going to get overly excited about, but it should appeal to a lot of people who might not have seriously considered getting a PDA before. New PIC reviewer and long-time "Piloteer", Dan Royea, brings us this in-depth review of the new Zire.

Palm Inc has announced the new entry level, low cost, Zire Handheld. With a street price of $99, the Palm Zire handheld is designed for the first-time purchaser and is being billed as "The ultimate alternative to paper."

The Palm Zire handheld represents the first major introduction to mainstream consumers, a new Palm OS handheld model at the sub-$100 price point. It has a polished white face and silver back design reminiscent of an Apple iPod.

The Clie Users Club in Japan have posted some excellent pictures of the Sony CLIE NX-70V and the new accessories. -Brooks

Back2Palm is a website made by a former Pocket PC user, that switched back to the Palm OS. It is an informative site, and has some head to head comparissons of the Palm OS to PPC. -Roman Pedan

Launcher PLUS is yet another launcher that’s been brought into the fold for Palm OS Machines. Fortunately, it’s a pretty decent launcher. It’s not loaded with features, but it does everything quickly, and easily, and overall, is a very nice launcher. Davy Fields brings us this software review.

Veo, a digital imaging product and services company, has announced a new line of PDA digital cameras. The Photo Traveler series of cameras plug into handhelds with an SD or Compact Flash expansion slots.

Palm Inc. announced that the Palm Board of Directors has approved a reverse stock split and established a ratio of 1-for 20. This move followed a vote Oct. 1 at the Palm Annual Shareholders' Meeting in which shareholders authorized the board to effect the reverse split. Palm common stock will begin trading on a reverse-split basis on Oct. 15, 2002.

Hexacto and Team17 have joined forces to bring Worms World Party to handheld gaming market. Worms World Party is the latest in a long line of addictively fun Worms games. Players control an army of four worms, each of whom are dropped into combat zones against rival worm factions. Using the wide array of weapons at their disposal - including homing missiles, shotguns, concrete donkeys and sheep strikes - the aim of the game is to wipe out the opposing worms using your arsenal.

When Sony introduced their clip-on keyboard for the CLIE, they also introduced a game controller, the PEGA-GC10. This controller snaps onto the T, NR, NX, SL, and SJ series CLIEs, connecting through the bottom accessory connector using a small pigtail connector. Ben Combee brings us this hands-on review.

Handspring has officially announced the availability of its GPRS software upgrade for Treo 180 and 270 for customers in Europe and Asia. A US release has not been formally issued, however our friends at TreoCentral have unofficial instructions to get it up and running on US networks.

Sony has just announced the Clié PEG NX-70V and NX-60 handhelds. These models run Palm OS 5 on a 200mhz ARM CPU (Intel XScale PAX250). They have a high-Resolution TFT 320x480 screen, 16 MB RAM, 16 MB ROM, a new wireless expansion slot, Memory Stick slot, a built-in voice recorder, MP3 player and an internal mini keyboard. The handhelds have the similar folding clamshell design from the Sony NR series.

Pricing for these models has the NX-70V at $599, and the NX60 retailing for $499. Both will be available in the US around the beginning of November, SonyStyle lists them as shipping on or before Oct. 28.